Over the first month-plus of the 2025-26 season, the New Jersey Devils have been ravaged by injuries. I know I’m stating the obvious here, but it really can’t be understated how much injuries have affected the Devils’ season. The team has suffered so many injuries that the group of players that wears the uniform has started to resemble the Utica Comets more than the New Jersey Devils. Yet somehow, the NHL’s Ship of Theseus has overcome all these injuries to begin their season 13-4-1. This team deserves immense credit for pulling off such a feat, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned that the bottom will drop out any day now.
The one silver lining here is that the injury bug had not yet come for the team’s most important players, namely Jack Hughes, Nico Hischier, Jesper Bratt, and Timo Meier. Sure Brett Pesce is arguably New Jersey’s best defenseman at this moment in time, and his injury has been difficult to absorb. But at least the Devils had some semblance of depth on the right side of their defense to cover his loss for a bit.
But over the weekend, the injury bug finally bit one of New Jersey’s indispensable players.
Jack Hughes will be out for around two months after suffering a “freak” injury at a team dinner in Chicago. He is the Devils’ best player, and unlike at right-side defense, New Jersey does not have depth to spare at the center position. Simply put, New Jersey will be a far worse team with Hughes out of the lineup, they cannot function as well without him.
At the very least, this is not a season-ending injury. If he really does return in approximately two months, that means we can expect to see him back in the lineup in mid-January. Assuming no more injuries (I know, big assumption), that would give Hughes plenty of time to get back up to speed for the playoffs if the Devils manage to qualify.
But it’s that “manage to qualify” part that has me a bit concerned. Two months isn’t season-ending, but it’s a significant amount of time. So how can the Devils survive life without their best player for two months and manage to still be in a playoff spot upon his return? Let’s go through some thoughts on the current state of the team and address some ways they might attack life without Jack Hughes.
The Other Players Need To Get Healthy
So aside from Hughes, what is the current status of New Jersey’s other injured players? The good news is several of them should (emphasis on should) be back before Hughes hits the ice again.
Perhaps the most important of them all is Pesce. He suffered his injury on October 26th against the Colorado Avalanche. After that game, head coach Sheldon Keefe said Pesce would be expected to miss “at least a month”. I’m going to put on my detective hat for a second and say that if Pesce was expected to miss two-plus months like Hughes, Keefe would have said that. “At least a month” implies to me that Pesce is expected to miss anywhere from one month to slightly less than two months. If that’s the case, we can probably expect to see Pesce back in the next 2-3 weeks. Not ideal, but we won’t have to wait for too much longer.
Elsewhere on the right side of the blueline, Dougie Hamilton should return within the next week or so, though we won’t see Johnny Kovacevic for a while, most likely not until 2026.
As far as other New Jersey centers go, we won’t be seeing Cody Glass for a couple weeks at least after he was injured against Chicago last week. Thankfully it’s not a “month-to-month” injury so I would expect Glass back before Christmas. I mentioned that Pesce might be the most significant injury loss, but I could also make the case for Glass. He has his limitations of course, but he can be a steady presence in the middle six, and this season he’s shown a pleasantly surprising goal-scoring ability. If Glass can return soon, that would go a long way toward stabilizing the center ice position.
As for Evgenii Dadonov and Connor Brown, I honestly have no idea at this point. Dadonov has been out since midway through Opening Day, and Brown’s injury on the west coast trip didn’t seem all that serious, but he’s been out a while now with no concrete updates. Meanwhile I really feel for Zack MacEwen, who solidified the fourth line once he was inserted into the lineup, got hurt and missed time, came back and clicked on the fourth line again, then was injured in Chicago and is now out again. I don’t know when to expect him back either.
Add it all up and we see a lot of players who should start returning over the next few weeks. In fact I expect just about every one of these players to return before Jack Hughes does. We can only hope they don’t suffer anymore injury setbacks, as getting these players back would go a long way towards mitigating the loss of Hughes.
Hischier Needs To Return To Form
You know what would really help the Devils absorb Hughes’ absence? Nico Hischier finding his game again.
I hate to speculate, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Hischier is nursing some sort of injury himself. He got off to a great start to the season, so much so that I wrote about it back in October. Since then, Hischier has looked like a shell of himself. He’s not producing points anymore, he’s not shutting down elite competition anymore, and he’s not driving play even against depth players anymore. No getting around it, he’s been bad:
That is absolutely shocking to see from a player of Hischier’s caliber. Whether he needs to get healthy from an undisclosed injury or he’s perfectly healthy and just slumping, the captain really needs to get it going again.
If I wanted to look at the glass being half-full, I’d say that I do have confidence that he will, in fact, figure it out. Hischier is too talented a player to be held down for long. If it’s an injury, then I expect him to regain his health relatively soon since this is an injury that’s not serious enough to keep him out. And if it’s not an injury, even better, as that would mean I anticipate a bounce back any day now. The Devils absolutely need Hischier to be the stud 1C he’s always been in Hughes’ absence.
Nemec Needs To Keep It Up For A Little While Longer
The past couple of weeks have been very encouraging for Simon Nemec. He’s still got his flaws as a player, some of them being serious flaws, but he’s got unmistakable strengths as well. After a rocky start to the campaign, Nemec has put together some of his strongest showings lately, culminating in his magnum opus in Chicago in which he scored a hat trick that included the game-winner in overtime. He obviously won’t be doing that every game, but on a team decimated by injuries, New Jersey needs as many players to step up as possible.
Nemec followed up his tour de force against the Blackhawks by netting the game-winner in the shootout in Washington on Saturday. It actually wasn’t a particularly good game for Nemec, but I’m willing to forgive him considering the current state of the Devils. And scoring the shootout winner goes a long way toward salvaging a game anyway.
Nemec is still an incomplete player, and he continues to make you scratch your head watching some of the plays he makes. But he also is capable of driving offense to a huge degree from the back end, and with Hughes on the shelf for a while, New Jersey is all of a sudden starved for offensive play-drivers. If Nemec can continue to produce offense from the blue line, that would be a huge boost.
Special Teams Need To Keep Being A Difference-Maker
Through all the injuries, the Devils’ special teams have never faltered. In fact you could argue that New Jersey boasts the best special teams in the entire NHL:
This needs to continue. Yes I understand not having Hughes is going to hurt the power play a lot. That being said, New Jersey still has top offensive players that should help that unit tread water while Hughes recovers. Hischier, Bratt, Meier, Nemec, Luke Hughes, Dawson Mercer, Stefan Noesen, Arseny Gritsyuk…these are all players that should be able to produce on the man-advantage even without Jack Hughes’ help. They don’t need to be the top PP unit in the NHL, but they do need to be above-average, and probably around top-10. It will be a challenge, but I think the current group is capable of it.
On the other side, the penalty kill has been splendid as well, coming in at around 85% efficiency entering today. That’s top-5 in the league, which is roughly where they should stay, especially as they continue to return to full strength on the blue line.
Losing Hughes will hurt the team’s production at 5-on-5. But if the power play can pick up the slack, and if the penalty kill can continue to hum, that would cover Hughes’ absence in a big way.
The Coaching Staff Needs To Figure Out The Best Tactics
Here’s one that I’ll be curious about. In 2024-25, the Devils’ first season under Sheldon Keefe, New Jersey went away from the run and gun system implemented by Lindy Ruff and become much more of a defensive team. A big emphasis was less rush offense, more dump and chase, and a heavy focus on defensive structure and responsibility. The Devils were a fantastic defensive team in the 2024 part of 2024-25, and while they faded after that, they were still solid defensively until the very end.
But that team obviously had its limitations. Circa January or February of last season, it became clear that Fitzgerald overcorrected on bringing in grit and physicality. The players tasked with providing sandpaper just could not score at all, and the offense cratered. The team still made the playoffs, and while I still think the Devils would’ve at the very least taken that first round series to seven games (if not outright won it) if they were fully healthy, they still didn’t have the offensive juice to go all the way.
Then after the season ended, Fitzgerald seemed to understand he overcorrected on grit, and injected some much needed speed and skill back into the lineup. Dadonov and Brown were signed in free agency, Gritsyuk came over from Russia, Glass was brought back, and all of a sudden the Devils returned to being more rush-oriented in their offensive approach. Not to the level they were at under Ruff, but New Jersey was playing much faster to begin this season.
With Hughes now out for a while, I wonder if this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back in terms of forcing the coaching staff to shift their approach. The team had lost players like Hamilton, Brown, and Dadonov, who all brought something to the table as far as rush offense and transition play goes. But they remained more focused on rush and transition tactics because they still had players who could do it. Without Hughes now, I wonder if Keefe decides to revert back to trying to grind out slow, methodical 2-1 victories again.
I’m not even saying I necessarily endorse that approach. But it’s something I’m curious about, and I can see the merits to it. If New Jersey does not have the personnel to execute high-level rush offense and transition play right now, perhaps a slower, more defensive approach is best until the Devils get healthier.
Tom Fitzgerald Needs To Figure Out Some External Additions
Now we get to the fun(?) part: speculating about trades.
There are really two popular names out there right now, so we’ll focus on them today: Nashville’s Ryan O’Reilly and St. Louis’ Jordan Kyrou. O’Reilly has two years left on his deal at a $4.5m AAV. Not bad at all for a player that, while in his mid-30’s, still seems to have plenty of juice left. And because his contract is up at the end of next season, this would be a move for now AND a move for later. Remember, the Devils might be asking O’Reilly to step into a top-six role now, but once Hughes returns then O’Reilly becomes an overqualified 3C, which would in turn make a (healthy) Cody Glass an overqualified 4C. All of a sudden a team weakness, center depth, becomes a major strength on paper.
Kyrou on the other hand would not help the center depth since he’s a winger, but he’s one heck of a winger. If a trade for O’Reilly is a move for now and later, a move for Kyrou would take that to the next level. The 27-year old has a whopping six years left on his deal after this season, with an AAV of $8.125m. It’s a big cap hit, but he’s worth it, especially in a rising cap environment. Over the last four seasons, Kyrou has averaged about 33 goals and 71 points per season, excellent numbers indeed. Imagine him on a line with Hughes and Bratt. That might be the most fun line in the league.
The downside, of course, is that a move for either of these players will cost a lot. Even O’Reilly, who theoretically shouldn’t cost that much considering his age, modest point production, and contract, will not come cheap. Teams know how desperate New Jersey is to fill holes in their roster. You can just see the vultures circling overhead, trying to extort Tom Fitzgerald for huge returns. The onus will be on Fitz and the rest of the Devils’ braintrust to thread the needle between adding talent while not overpaying too much.
I know I’m being a bit unreasonable here, but I would absolutely love to see the Devils make one of these moves. As mentioned, each player would help in different ways, but they would both help nonetheless. New Jersey is right in the middle of their contention window, and in a season in which there does not appear to be a super-team set to dominate the East, the Devils should go all-in to win a wide-open conference. I would be fine slightly overpaying for a player like O’Reilly or Kyrou.
Final Thoughts And Your Take
These are just a few ways New Jersey can help cover the loss of Hughes for the next two months. This is not an exhaustive list, as an exhaustive list would basically be book-length. But at the very least, I wanted to cover some of the most important ways the Devils could survive without their superstar center in the lineup.
What do you think the Devils should do now that Hughes is set to miss time? Aside from Hischier, is there anyone else you want to see improve their form? Aside from Nemec, is there anyone else you want to see sustain big gains? What other external options might you want to see New Jersey pursue? As always, thanks for reading!